Crypto community raising ETH to evacuate civilians from Gaza
As the tensions between Gaza and Israel continue, Ethereum community member Kat has started an ETH-powered campaign to help evacuate local families to safety.
A new campaign ETH Evacuations has raised over $55,000 in the past 24 hours for families attempting to leave the Gaza strip. The campaign comes amid news of intensified fighting in the Gaza strip after Hamas-aligned militants stormed into Israel on October 7, leaving hundres of thousands of Palestinians displaced.
The campaign, spear headed by @Katalunia030, who previously worked as the head of product at Zora, a creator-focused platform on the Ethereum network. She initially launched the campaign on March 10, unveiling ethevacuations.xyz to help send donations in ETH directly to families in Gaza.
The campaign quickly picked up pace, with the crypto community actively engaging in helping spread the word. Kat herself has been donating to the campaign and has also been involved with multiple charitable initiatives since her visit to the troubled nation in June 2023.
According to Kat, it costs approximately 1.5 ETH (approximately $5k) for an adult and 0.5 ETH (approximately $2k) for a child to safely cross the Gaza border via the Rafah crossing, the sole crossing point between Egypt and Palestine. Supposedly, anyone crossing via that route needs to pay the “coordination fees.” The campaign funds these expenses
Kat initially began helping her friends and colleagues who were struggling to evacuate. As the donations picked up pace, she extended the campaign to the broader community. By March 13, the campaign was able to safely evacuate two families away from harm.
The campaign also saw several NFT artists pledging their support by listing collections to raise funds. One artist, troels_a, on X, launched the EVAC open edition project on Coinbase’s base network, with all funds going towards the education campaign. Another artist going by ‘brian is online’ on X, launched three more NFTs and pledged to match all the proceeds generated.
As of the latest update, the campaign, which has been live for 3.5 weeks, has raised over $100,000 in ETH. The donations were received in multiple cryptocurrencies, suggesting that the efforts were not just limited to the Ethereum community.
The latest donation to the campaign was a whopping 10 ETH, valued at approximately $32,868 at the time of receipt. However, the donor’s identity remains unknown.
The campaign is also a testament to the transparency offered by blockchain technology. This is a vital factor in philanthropic campaigns, especially since there have been several cases of fraud in the name of charity.
